Barack Obama has accused Republicans of being the Ebenezer Scrooges of
Washington who would ruin Christmas for US families by allowing their income
taxes to rise by $2,000 (£1,200) in the new year.

After shocking them with a bold opening gambit in talks to stop the US falling off the “fiscal cliff”, the president attacked Republican leaders for blocking a deal to freeze taxes on 98 per cent of Americans.

"If Congress does nothing, every family in America will see their income taxes automatically go up on January 1," Mr Obama told a crowd at a toy factory in Pennsylvania.

"I'm assuming that doesn't sound too good to you. That's the lump of coal Christmas – the Scrooge Christmas".

Mr Obama and opposition leaders are trying to thrash out a plan to replace across-the-board tax hikes and $600 billion in swingeing spending cuts scheduled to start on January 1 – the so-called "fiscal cliff" that economists say could throw the US back into recession.

While the president is willing to sign a short-term deal to stop taxes rising for all households earning up to $250,000, Republicans refuse to support this because it would raise tax rates for the two per cent of Americans earning more.

A month after winning re-election, Mr Obama effectively returned to the campaign trail in snowy eastern Pennsylvania to urge Americans to lobby their representatives to pass his plan.

The president hailed the owners of the factory, which makes K'Nex construction kits, for "aggressively" returning outsourced jobs to the US.

After Mr Obama was accused by his opponent Mitt Romney of winning by cynically offering "gifts" to sections of the electorate, supporters at the event were given free toys on their way out.

"It's not acceptable to me – and I don't think it's acceptable to you – for a handful of Republicans in Congress to hold middle-class tax cuts hostage, simply because they don't want tax raises on upper-income folks," Mr Obama told supporters on Friday night.

He delivered his remarks as details emerged of his audacious opening bid in the talks in Washington, which is said to have flabbergasted the Republican negotiating team. Mitch McConnell, the party's leader in the Senate, told reporters that he "burst into laughter".

The president is standing firm in seeking $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue over the next decade – twice as much as the sum Republicans came close to agreeing last year, before backing out of a deal.

He also requested $50 billion in new stimulus spending to boost the economy.

In return, he proposes cutting $400 billion from cherished welfare schemes to help close America's budget deficit. However he also told Republicans that he wants to strip Congress of its power to set the "debt ceiling", which limits how much money the US government may owe – currently about $16 trillion.

Political brinkmanship during negotiations to raise the debt ceiling last year led to the downgrade of America's credit rating by Standard & Poor's, a leading rating agency, for the first time in 70 years.

John Boehner, the Republican House Speaker, said Mr Obama and the Democrats should "get serious" and that "no substantive progress" had been made in the first three weeks of talks. "I'm disappointed in where we are," he said.

However, while conceding Mr Obama will need to compromise, Democrats are increasingly confident that Republicans will cave in to his demand to raise taxes on households earning $250,000 a year, to avoid being the party that threw the US over the fiscal cliff to protect the "top two per cent".

"You can smell the winds," Charles Schumer, a Democratic Senator for New York, told reporters. "When so many Republicans say 'hey, we're going to have to give in to the Democrats' ... that's the beginning of their beginning to agree with us – or being required to agree with us."

Mr Schumer's prediction came after Tom Cole, a senior Republican congressman for Oklahoma, broke with his party leadership to tell reporters: "I think we ought to take the 98 per cent deal right now".

Mr Cole joined a string of colleagues to have effectively renounced the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" signed by hundreds of Republican congressmen, who promised their constituents that they would never raise income taxes.